1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field graphical user interfaces and more particularly to a method for entering information into a form on a screen display associated with an electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many a site on the Internet's World Wide Web (hereafter “web site”. “web page” or simply “site”) require the entry of various information in order to gain full access to the site and the services offered by the site. For example, many commercial sites require a user to set up an account and, in doing so, to provide various levels of personal information. Typically, the information is relatively repetitive from site to site—e.g., name, address, telephone number, electronic mail (email) address, credit card number, etc. In some cases, the information must be entered each time the user attempts to use the site. In other cases, an account is actually set up for the user and maintained—the user needs only to enter the full information the first time the site is accessed.
An example of an account set up screen is provided in FIG. 1. The figure illustrates a screen shot 100 of a web site accessed via, for example, web browser software executing on computing device such as a personal computer. The web site provides for online ordering, in this particular instance, of cookies. As can be seen, the user is invited to complete the shipping and billing information by visiting each data field and entering the appropriate information (e.g., name 101, address 102, phone number 103, email address 104, etc.). Alternatively, at some web sites, the user may click on a button, hyperlink, etc., to log in and fill in ordering information automatically (presuming the user has a previously set up account.)
One method of addressing the inconvenience of repetitive data entry of account information is the so-called “wallet” technology. Using “wallets”, a user may enter certain information (name, address, billing/credit card information) once and sites that run the particular wallet technology will be able to receive the information without requiring the user to reenter the data. Unfortunately, this technology requires sites to execute the wallet technology in order to allow a user to benefit from it. A diagram 200 illustrating a particular embodiment of the wallet technology is shown in FIG. 2.
One other method of addressing the inconvenience of repetitive data entry is the so-called “type-ahead” technology in which the user's computing system attempts to “remember” certain information and, if a user starts to type a sequence of characters using, for example, a keyboard or other character input device, the system attempts to recognize the character sequence and complete the sequence. For example, if the user named John Smith starts to type his name in a name field, the system may recognize the user is typing “John Smith” after the user has only typed “Joh” and automatically fill in the remaining “n Smith”.
Unfortunately, the type ahead technology is limited in that it may or may not correctly recognize the phrase being typed and implementations are typically browser software dependent. Moreover, the type ahead technology requires the user to independently visit each field in a form, rather than filling in multiple fields with a single click.
Thus, it would be useful to provide a method and apparatus which reduces the inconvenience of repetitive data entry. It would be particularly useful to provide a method and apparatus which was not browser dependent and which did not require implementation by each individual web site in order to allow a user to benefit from it.